Posts Tagged politics

This beautiful cityFinally fights to save her loveShe awakens from the long sleepand uncounts the river jewels taken from her bedthe sapphires he tried to use as eyesthe emeralds of envyand the blood diamond she’d had as her heartShe uncurls each sacred storyand flies those ribbons beginning to sing againShe turns and turnsin the spinning top of hopein the spinning top of hope

— Linda Cleary (January 2011)*

This beautiful city haunts me. She holds me by the scruff of my neck in a dead, weary grip. I know that it would let go if I did but I never try. I see other worlds but something tells me I’d fall through a bottomless abyss if I let go. And so I stay. I don’t know what kind of magic Cairo works through people with her veined, callous hands, but she draws them in with a permanent enchantment and lives within them forever. There are those who manage to escape the spell but they never stop thinking of her. It haunts them everyday.

This city has shown me a thousand extreme faces in one lifetime. Sometimes those extremities race each other towards me within a second. I see vice and virtue walk hand in hand in the street and I see no child in the middle. One of them breeds the other and the other the same. They can’t exist without each other.

This beautiful city is back where it started. It has turned and it has turned in the spinning top of hope until it could turn no longer. The tyrant has hammered the final nail to her coffin as she dizzily fell into eternal despair.

This beautiful city has put on her ugly face. She lies in the arms of vice and sets out a trap for those who, by taking their brisk lively strides, by inhaling fresh, young breaths, by holding on to their books, by existing, are threatening her with hope once more.

The blood diamond heart has stopped beating and turned to stone. The river jewels are scattered everywhere, crushed by the judge’s hammer. The sapphires and emeralds taken away for good. The ribbons have been undone, pulled away and torn with delicate strands of hair and ripped to shreds.

This beautiful city has lost the fight. Her children have bathed themselves in blood, their kin tossed and turned in mud to put out the fire ignited in their souls.

What more can a young man give to this greedy witch other than his own life? And she still won’t stop killing him a thousand times over. How further unjust can injustice go? How can a man ever stop this atrocity of humiliation from continuing except by ceasing to continue himself? Should an Egyptian take a conscious decision to stop having children so that whoever is alive today would be the last? Let the young beating hearts grow old with her until they are no more. Let her take pride alone in the tyrants she has lain with over thousands of years. None of us care. Let her have her history. All we need is justice and, if it’s not too much to ask, life.

*The above poem was written by English poet and writer Linda Cleary who lived in Cairo for 5 years and was present at the time of the uprising in January 2011. I revisit her words today, three years later, after Mubarak and his police aids have been cleared of all charges in the murder of protesters. Below is a video shot of the families of the victims after learning about the verdict.

Egypt just keeps coming at me. I took a vow of silence more than a year ago and it just wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Everything that had been going on had been way too much for me to take so I decided to shut down and stop following the news or listening to idiots talk. Yet somehow this country manages to creep its treats under my doorstep and surprise me just when I think I can’t be more surprised.

The possibility of change three years ago played on all of our emotions; we were ecstatic despite our shocks. We knew that we lived under injustice and everything colorful a sixty year old dictatorship could fashion, but we hadn’t seen ugliness and looked it in the eye until we saw cars and tanks driving over hundreds of protesters and crushing them like they were grass, or anti-protest officers dressed in civilian clothing dragging bodies and dumping them in the trash. This only fueled us more to go further into the streets and bring this aging dictator down. Everything he had built around himself to keep money flowing into his pockets and servants lining to bow before him had to be dismantled. We weren’t naive, we just went by the book and thought our numbers would suffice. We didn’t realize that this web of trust and support he had built around himself was the very pillars upon which the entire system stood, and that it was so rooted into the fabric of the country that, with one metaphoric press of a button, those numbers that marched hand in hand to bring him down could turn on each other, become life enemies and start calling each other names.

People got shot dead in the streets, there are videos that show police snipers shooting live bullets from rooftops of the ministry of interior. Thousands got shot in the head and in the chest for the world to see. The shooters were identifiable, by name and face, but none of them got convicted. But that’s not it. It’s the freak show that keeps topping itself with more freakish things. It’s that freak show’s ability to shock you by making your worst case scenario expectations – those farcical things you say out of doom that don’t make all that much sense – a reality.

What would have been a farce if said three years ago when we saw all that blood and saw the faces of those involved in it? That the culprits would be cleared of the charges and claimed innocent? That just happened. Mubarak and the head of the police at the time when all the killing happened have just received their innocence in court, and there are people cheering and singing and dancing in the street as I write this.

So you don’t have to go to great lengths to imagine how that freak show operates. It’s ridiculously simple. Think of a single woman TV anchor that shoots down the protesters with her words, calling them agents and traitors and shedding tears in front of the camera in sympathy for Mubarak, whom she calls a “father” for all Egyptians, and then the minute he steps down she hails the revolution and the patriots that brought an end to an era of injustice and tyranny. Watch her and a thousand others switch back and forth shamelessly like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Think of a row of women singing and chanting for Mubarak and saying that those 18 year olds deserved to be killed because they didn’t know how to respect the state. The state. Listen to their bizarre definitions of what a state means. Now visualize them wearing scarves on their heads; that Islamic head covering that is supposed to be a symbol of religiosity, kindness, modesty and in their view a submission to the higher will of God.

Think of major newspapers flaunting live ammunition preparations to combat foreseen protests expected to take place.

Think of famous columnists writing words of hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and occasional racism calling ordinary people to take up arms against each other, or to report their neighbors to the state if they suspect anything “unusual.” Now think of them hosted on TV as informative political analysts (by said TV anchor and the likes, of course) and continuing to write and publish in major outlets with no legal action taken against them. In fact, with not so much as a raised eyebrow from readers who proudly post those articles on their social network profiles.

Think of a man in a military uniform declaring that he has come up with an earth shattering invention that is able to remotely diagnose and cure a patient with AIDS or liver disease. Watch men dressed in white coats pointing a wireless device at a man walking back and forth and waiting for the device to signal which disease the man has. Now watch, again, said TV anchor host an “expert” who, after a fraction of a second’s hesitation, confirms that the device can detect and cure cancer as well.

Watch tyranny reap the harvest of decades of planned ignorance, poverty and disease that ate up millions. Watch it sit back and relax and wait for those millions to come back to it on their knees, crawling and asking for forgiveness of all their sins, for they have once dared believe that someone else might lift them out of their misery, not knowing that their subhuman lives were the best the state could offer. It was after all their own fault; they are too many. When counting how much the state needs to spend for them and for the hand tailored suits of the president that have his name threaded on the fabric with the finest touch from Italy, it simply can’t afford it. It’s doing the best it can to keep everyone happy. The president with his suits and the millions with the best lives they have ever known.

You figure out the rest of the freak show. Let your mind wander freely and see what absurdities it can come up with and you’ve got it, topped with worse and even more.

Reenactment in Ashoura procession used to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment

A few days ago a close friend of mine posted a picture of two Muslim women dressed in black wearing the headscarf in a conservative fashion, covering not only the hair and neck but a large part of the chin as well, leading a line of little girls shrouded completely in black, their faces unseen, and their hands were tied together in chains. I normally don’t pay much attention to the many shares my friends post on Facebook because over the past few years I’ve realized that hardly any of the articles or pictures are accurate, but my friend’s horrified comment next to the picture made me want to see what the caption said. I clicked on it and went to its original post. The caption associated with the picture read “Muslim girls being lead off in chains to meet their new husbands.” Looking around within the picture I could see that the women in the background had their hands on their chest in what was clearly a rhythmic beating. I realized that I was looking at a Shiite Ashoura procession. The girls covered in black and chained were performing a reenactment of the aftermath of the battle of Karbala where the granddaughter of the prophet was brought chained to the Caliph in Damascus after her brother had been decapitated. Shiites mark this time of year to be a time of mourning and sadness and recall the heroism of the prophet’s descendants in the face of tyranny.

There were over five thousands likes and thousands of shares. There are over fourteen thousand likes to that picture as I write this and a sea of comments that doesn’t seem to end. Most of the comments are hateful rants towards Muslims and Islam that go all the way to extermination. Some have actually commented that Hitler “started with the wrong religion.” And in between these comments there were those who were trying to show the reality of the picture but they were either being ignored or shunned. The thread had become a powerhouse to the stubborn, angry ones who didn’t want to be told they were ignorant. Comments like “we don’t need to know the truth, this happens anyway” or “it doesn’t matter if the picture isn’t true” received dozens of likes.

Apart from the clear Islamophobia inherent in the post, there was more importantly a brazen show of disrespect to the audience that reminded me too much of the kinds of posts I see everyday about the situation in my country, where suddenly all people ever talk about is politics. There was a clear attempt to stir up emotions, and for the past three years most of the posts I’ve seen about Egypt were of this kind. One would think that ignorance is silent, receiving, acted upon, but I realized that there’s really no sound louder than the sound of ignorance, and no people more confident and outspoken than those who have no idea what they’re talking about.

We’re all ignorant about many things, and in difficult times when feelings are sore it’s hard to remain reserved and not say something, anything, to let the steam out. What we’re usually doing then is just that: letting out steam. We’re not adding anything and we’re definitely not receiving much. In conversations like these no one is even listening; it’s hard to dissociate what we’re receiving – be it a comment or a picture or a piece of news – from our feelings and from our previous related experience, so our reaction is usually marred by whatever that thing we’re receiving has conjured up. Rarely is it merely a reaction with the same size and magnitude of the action itself.

My friends recently bullied a person who was trying to pinpoint a technicality in the Egyptian justice system. She could have been saying something worth paying attention to or she could have been talking gibberish, but she was stating a fact worth looking into first before deciding on the value of her words or even her political allegiance. Yet somehow my friends quickly dubbed her as a voice from the enemy camp and tucked her away into a categorical mental box. She was immediately dragged into the forcefield of the powerhouse. Perhaps they knew her allegiance beforehand and perhaps they didn’t, but there was nothing in what she said, in my opinion, worth conjuring all of that. That is why I use the word “bully” and I mean it in every way. The mere fact that she was not joining in on the wailing automatically placed her in the opposite camp. They started jumping on her words and taking them to further hypothetical ends she never explicitly expressed. Needless to say the conversation got unnecessarily ugly from all sides, and I watched mortified as my friends continued to shoot at that person even though she had withdrawn from the conversation and blocked half of them. I actually considered interfering to her benefit, neither to attack them nor defend her, but rather to show them what their emotions made them do, or to just show them what the conversation looked like to me from the outside, but I thought better. My friends were way too emotional that I knew I would be risking being placed on the enemy camp along with her. I would say that that shouldn’t happen because, after all, they were my friends and they knew me well, but in reality I didn’t think our wounds allowed us to see each other anymore.

Behind the safety of the keyboard there is a liberty many of us aren’t really aware of. It just acts itself out as we clack our emotions away. Some people become passionate lovers and others become dreamy children, but the troubling ones are the sociopaths. I read some of the words in the comments on that picture of the little Shiite girls and I started wondering what the people who wrote those words were like in their actual lives. I looked at their profiles and there was nothing out of the ordinary, yet they seemed to be so ignorant of Muslim culture that they’ve been easily manipulated by fear of the unknown. I couldn’t help comparing them with our situation at home. Some of us show indifference to the suffering of others simply because they happen to come from the wrong side of the political camp. I know some such people personally, and some I know very, very well, and I know that they are nothing but regular individuals leading quiet, ordinary lives. It’s disturbing to wonder how many nice people in our lives hide inside them hating, aggressive, vulgar sociopaths that only come out in the virtual world, but I think the reality is that ignorance of the other has generated unbearable fear, a kind of fear so out of proportion that it can be easily manipulated into anything. Somehow, this fear only finds solace with the fear of others. From behind the screens we, the ignorant, bond and our confidence grows until we’re ready to gang up on anyone who dares to challenge the comfort of our ignorance. We choose to leave our real world and forever live in our powerhouse, and somehow, the scared, the lost, the confused become the confident, the know-it-all, the judgmental.

It scares me to think of what humans are capable of producing in collectivity, and I place myself as no exception. This realization that one is “not alone” is of course comforting, but it can have very dire consequences.

Did I ever tell you about the time when I was 7 years old and was left alone on a plane heading to Ottawa?

I was flying to Montreal with my parents and friends of the family. We were seated in front rows and our friends – whose daughter was at my age – were in the back, so I spent the entire flight sitting with them. When the plane landed I decided to go back to the front to find my parents and remind my mother of my little bag. I went up to my seat and found that my parents had already left the plane – trusting that I was leaving with their friends – and I went back to my friend’s family and found that they had left too. The door was closing and the flight attendants were buckling up in preparation for the final stretch to Ottawa. In shock and despair I tried to meet my new fate and go back to my old seat, but I began to cry. I got up, ran to the flight attendant and with a quivering voice I said “I want to go down.” She was shocked. “Where are your parents?” she asked, “Did they leave you in the bathroom?” The story was too complicated for me to explain in the midst of my gasps and yelps. So I just repeated my request. Soon I was let out of the plane and taken in a nice car to the terminal, where I found my mother a weeping wreck and my father trying to book a flight to Ottawa.

It was the most traumatizing experience of my life then.

Years later, as the hormones began to rage and I became an angry 14 year old wondering why oh why my father wouldn’t let me go down to the nightclub with my friends, I began to wonder what would have happened if I really had gone to Ottawa and begun a new life of my own (ignoring the fact that there existed authorities that wouldn’t let a 7 year old just “be” on her own and a father who would come get me a couple of hours later).

When I was 16 I considered running away with my cousin and finding a new life in America. The reason was that I was offended and insulted that my father objected to the presumptuous dance we did on the roof of the house, right next to the water storage tank (which is usually placed on the highest point in the roof). I had no visa to the US and there was no way I could apply for one alone at 16. Yet still I asked myself later what if I did run away then? Who, or rather what, would I have become?

I spent a good deal of my life asking these kinds of questions to myself, and I still catch myself doing this every now and then.

What if I did marry the stalker who knew where I lived and knew every member of my family and had the guts to walk into my father’s office and ask for my hand in marriage?

What if I hadn’t put on the Muslim headscarf at 22? What if I hadn’t taken it off at 39?

What if I hadn’t taken my editing job in Cairo and went after what I wanted and applied to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government after I finished my studies in AUC? What if I got accepted then? I would have never left Boston, that’s for sure, but what would my life have been now? What would my problems be? Would I have had time to clack away on my keyboard or would I have been too busy lecturing and writing academic books and brushing shoulders with policy makers?

What if I did accept that job offer I got on Aljazeera when I was 30 and moved to Qatar? Perhaps I would have continued on in my career as an editor, and I certainly would have had a very different world around me, shaping my view of everything.

What if I wasn’t so intimidated by the UK’s old quarantine laws for incoming pets and put my cat in there for 6 months and found a job in London when I had the chance? (Yes I’m one of those crazy cat women that let their cats run their lives, but in truth I think my cat was and still is just an excuse).

What if I did convert to Shiism when I considered it?

What if I did tell that self-righteous jerk exactly what I thought of him?

What if I did go out to dinner with that Canadian stranger on the plane?

Many times when the world takes on a shade just a little bit darker than the usual dark I find myself asking these questions and wondering about those alternative lives I could have had. My mind works them out perfectly in my head that I think of them more as parallel lives of parallel selves I already am. Each of those lives does fulfill a bit of me, or perhaps they fulfill the me I was in different phases of my life.

But in the midst of all of this I seem to forget the life I did have.

I didn’t walk away from my family at a young age, I stayed with my parents till the last day of their lives doing the best I could to be good to them. I stayed in my country and became more rooted in the culture and more comfortable with its oddities. I stayed in my job and through it I was exposed to a world I may never have gotten the chance to see. I got close to Muslim Brotherhood members and was exposed to their thought. I got to speak in front of the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoon that offended millions of Muslims worldwide and looked him in the eye, and I got to see the other side of the coin too. I met Hizbullah fighters, commanders, slept in their villages, had their coffee, shared their dishes, and heard inside stories of the 2006 war on the Lebanese south. I ran away from tear gas with a fearless friend I only met because I chose to stay in this life. I thought, I considered and I reconsidered until I became the person I am today. I had first hand experience about everything I talk so passionately about because, thankfully, I’ve seen stuff. That to me is worth a thousand books written on theories, based on theories, and protected by the comfortable bubble of assumptions and secondhand knowledge.

I felt the suffocation of my job, my life, the message I thought I was carrying to the world. I got disenchanted with it all and went and climbed Kilimanjaro, then went to the Himalayas, then the Andes. And somewhere in the middle of this I went to Florence and stole six perfect shots of David with my own camera right under the guards’ noses.

I may not have been able to reflect on all of this if I’d chosen to take any of the different life paths that presented themselves to me. Much of what I went through gave me pain, but I don’t believe I would have learned anything if it hadn’t.

So I know it sounds miserably cliché, but really, I just wouldn’t have had it any other way.

No sleep. I toss and turn. I send out a tweet. A buddy in Australia sends me back another tweet. “Get some sleep for at least a couple of hours,” but he knows I probably can’t even if I tried to. This was not supposed to be like this. I was relaxed all along the presidential campaigns. I knew that they would be far from perfect under the rule of the military junta, but I also knew that there was no way out of them if we were to come out of the impasse we’re in.

We’ve gone down the street, we’ve protested, shouted, struggled to get our voices heard, now all that is left for us is to make this vote. We earned it.

I get up in the morning and pour some coffee. Watch the news. Can’t stand the dumb commentary. I need to get ready for a long day, I think to myself. I look at the faces of the people standing in lines on TV. Everyone seems determined and confident. Those are faces of people that will not be fooled.

Ok that’s it. Can’t wait much longer. I get a bottle of cold water and pull on my jeans and off I go.

Streets are all so empty (and by empty here I mean smooth traffic). I take a taxi and I stare out the window but I don’t see much. I’m not in an emotional mood (yet). Suddenly a song I’ve known and loved since childhood starts playing in the radio. “Helwa ya Baladi.” My country, you are beautiful. And bam! Like someone suddenly put on a clip inside my head, completely out of my own will, with scenes from the revolution days.

I remember meeting with my two friends, Nadia and Adel (the latter is the one who tried to tweet me to sleep from Australia) all tense and pretending to have sandwiches under the penetrating eyes of the suspicious state security officers, waiting for the march to join it.

I remember the rising numbers of people in the marches that were everywhere I looked. “The people demand the fall of the regime” roaring everywhere and making my heart beat faster.

I remember the teargas. The suffocating moments where I thought I was going to die. The faces of the three men who came to my rescue and tried to give me water and onions to get rid of the effect.

I remember the sound of the rubber bullets. I remember the injured protesters fighting for their lives in the hospital.

I remember the ruling party’s building on fire. I remember maneuvering to cross the street to reach that tree without getting shot.

I remember the horses and the camels that came rushing into Tahrir trying to whip the protesters out of the square.

I remember the two men in Tahrir who tried to comfort me when I broke down and cried, telling me that it would all be alright. That they were not going to retreat.

I remember the night horrors. The live bullets down in our streets. The men in my family joining their neighbors taking night shifts in the street to protect homes and property.

I remember the minute we heard that Mubarak stepped down. The euphoria, the dancing in the street.

I remember the viciousness of the army in the months that followed. The continued killings and beatings.

I remember the beautiful smiling faces of the people who died.

I start weeping like an pregnant hormonal lady and throw the poor cab driver into a state of bewilderment. I ask for his tissues and blow away until we arrive at the polling station.

I can’t find any lines, I enter the school and find an average line inside, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t have to stand in any lines. Low voter turn out? I think to myself. I go inside with my red nose and face all puffy. Didn’t get a chance to recuperate from that emotional drive. I take the voting sheet and mark my candidate. I leave.

There are no sirens and there is no music to highlight the drama of the historical moment. A moment that I, at 39, never ever thought I would see. Ever.

I know it would be simplistic of me to think that with these elections we have entered our aspired new era. Far from it. But maybe we’ve taken our first baby step in the middle of a field of land mines and ambushes. Not all the candidates are fresh blood. Some are old faces that have worked closely with the old regime. I don’t trust them. There are things they have done that have helped put Egypt in the sorry state it is in not only domestically, but regionally. Turned it into a shrunken mutilated version of a country that once was. If they win, the very democracy that helped put them there might be jeopardized. And we don’t yet have the system that can protect us from them.

We need a president that will help us build that system. That solid rock hard system that will assure that a corrupt president will be put on trial. If we have that system I don’t care who nominates themselves in the next round.

Thoughts, thoughts rumbling around in my head, beating each other for my attention.

No, we’re not there yet. But we have nothing but our vote so we cast it, hoping that we’ve made the right choice. Now all I can do is pray that the right person for the right moment would win, WHOEVER that person may be.

The revolt’s first Friday was decisive. The preceding 3 days had shown that what had started on January 25 was not a mere demonstration. It spread like wildfire across the country. Police oppression cleared Tahrir square for normal use again, kept the streets flowing, but it was like a lid over boiling water. They knew – and we knew – that what had started was not going to stop and the protesters were not going anywhere. January 28 was intended to be our point of no return. Each one of us went to the street with that in mind. It was like knowing that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

It was also a decisive day in exposing many public figures, actors, singers, even imams, who went after their interests, so they either praised the regime and stormed the protesters with verbal attacks, or just remained silent, waiting to see how things would turn out, always wanting to be on the winning side.

I sat in the mosque waiting for the sermon to begin, wondering which kind the imam who was going to deliver it to us was. Word had spread that State Security police, Amn Dawla, had issued clear instructions to all major mosques around the country to preach that revolt against the ruler was a major sin, arguing that it threatens to shake the stability of the country and to promote division–a classic escape Muslim rulers have adhered to for centuries throughout Islamic history.

Unlike most times, none of the women in the mosque appeared to be engaged in any conversation. The place was mostly silent; some were praying and others were reading the Quran. The journalist began to take pictures, making some women uncomfortable. Soon the sermon began and Nadia and I listened attentively, waiting for the imam’s mistakes. Soon we discovered that we were not alone with this attitude. A girl clad in black sat before us, exchanging glances and smiles whenever the imam appeared to be wandering off in the desert, clearly over-making his points.

Panic as the march reaches the human wall of guards. Senior officers in plain clothes watch from a distance behind the guards.

To me the sermon lasted an eternity. I was so charged on the inside I could no longer tolerate the normalcy. It was soon over, we prayed, and moved to the main exit where the women merged with the men at the large open space. Everyone walked normally towards the door and by the time the first in line reached it the chants began. It was a moment of transition from the wary calm and quiet that spread across the mosque and in the faces of the worshippers to a loudness that never ceased from that moment on. Looking around me, it was as if everyone felt the same way I did; waiting for that key moment in which they could finally raise their voices together and demand their freedom. We all rushed toward the outer door, crowding each other as we frantically searched for our shoes and put them on. I don’t recall ever putting on my shoes with more of a rush. I didn’t want to lose Nadia with the shoving of the crowd. I kept my eye on her until I was ready, and we were both out in Azhar street with the flood of people chanting out of the mosque, taking the center of street, past the officers and the plain clothes policemen with their sunglasses and walki talkis who stood by watching.

The Azhar road is topped with the Azhar bridge, reaching directly to the center of the city. It is a narrow, long old market street filled with fabric, spice, and book shops on both sides. It was where my father used to buy the fabrics he distributed among the poor of his hometown village every Ramadan. I had taken it thousands of times on my way to college or on a Fatimid Cairo outing with friends. Its penetrating spice aroma would always linger in my head for long hours after I had passed through it. To me, it was the aroma of home; the Egypt I had grown to love – its history and mine – and the many beautiful tales of I’ve read and heard when I was a kid.

Crowds gathered on top of the bridge until rubber bullets began to disperse them.

As loud as the chants and shouts were as we moved through the closed space of the mosque exit, I expected that they’d disperse as we were out in the open space of the city, but they kept getting louder. The narrowness of the street and its relatively confined surroundings; the crowded shut down shops and the bridge overhead magnified the sounds of the protesters’ chants and shouts, echoing from one side of the street to the other. They seemed to be coming from all directions: in front of me, behind me, over me, and I could nearly feel the vibrations under my feet. The sounds felt like they were coming right out of the walls. Everything seemed to synchronize itself with the people. And as we continued more people were drawn to the streets out of awe or mere curiosity. Like most photojournalists some ran to the top of the bridge to get a better view. I could tell by the rising numbers that not everyone marching now was among those in the mosque. The chants drew many people in.

At this point all the resistance I could see from the police was a mere attempt to control the route of the march. Or perhaps just the density. Our march continued until we came to a human wall of guards in helmets blocking our passage, creating a small stampede. Some of the protesters tried to calm the crowds and stop them from getting into confrontation with the guards, so they signaled for everyone to jump on the iron bars that divided the two way street, the other side of the street being open for advancement. An older woman standing next to me began to panic with the pressing crowd. There was no way for her to go with the guards blocking the passage and the bars being too high. I held her by the hand and began to shout to one of the guards to let us through, given the condition of the woman. I used every bit of logic I could think of when my mere appeal to common sense did not do the trick with him, but all I continued to get from him were the same responses. “No. Sorry. Not allowed.” The more he said those words the more infuriated I became, so I began to push against him with all my might. He did not budge an inch. I know I’m not that weak and yet I failed to cause the slightest movement in him or any of his colleagues. I don’t call them a human wall out of nothing. They’re actually trained to be that. A senior officer places his orders and they are encrypted in their skulls. His words are final and there’s no rationalizing with them.

With the sheer force of the people they managed to create a gap in the iron bars and we went right threw it, marching on and out of the street till we got caught in more serious police resistance. We could hear rubber bullets being shot and people began to run everywhere. Sirens and showers of teargas canisters filled the intersection we found ourselves in. The air was no longer breathable. Nadia and I frantically looked for a place to hide until we found a small passageway between two buildings that many people were rushing into. As we followed them we found a senior police officer carried by some of the protesters and rushed into the same place, his face flushed red and he had difficulty breathing. For many of us this might have been the first time we encountered teargas so we were clueless as to how to combat its effects. All what many of us could think of was water. Many were calling out for water to give to the troubled officer and save him from whatever the gas appears to have done to him.

If that moment was anything to me, it was only proof and reassurance that our uprising was for beliefs, hopes, dreams. Those people of all ages marching around me held no grudges to uniforms or individuals; their only enemy was oppression and corruption. This was a war of ideas and beliefs, not people, because in that narrow passage there was no telling who was the enemy. The officer in the uniform among us was no more than just another helpless Egyptian desperate for a breath of fresh air. That’s what we all were.

To be continued.

Videos from the day:

Beginning of march from inside Al Azhar open space and out to the street:

The early spark. Egyptians from all walks of life join the march from Al Azhar mosque. Old men joined shouting “Down with Mubarak” while some carried their children on their shoulders:

Woman urging protesters to hold on:

Panic at the intersection, the sound of rubber bullets and me cursing:

Hiding from teargas in the narrow passage:

Police vehicle with its eerie siren gets caught among the protesters at the intersection. On that day many such vehicles have chosen to run over the protesters:

I wake and sleep to the sounds of the traffic and sirens outside my window. I look at this and think twice before I go out for any reason. (Can you spot the ambulance on the left?)

How badly can you want something? What would normally be the thing to do when you are placed with someone who has authority over the thing you want so much and withholds it from you? Would you walk your talk, confront them and live up with the consequences? Would you speak with fear of being denied your thing and so you acknowledge the authority lest you wake the beast?

My story today may not be that dramatic, but little violations of my rights everyday can turn me into something I’m not pleased with.

I was driving home last night, trying to arrive within less than 30 minutes on a route that should in any other city take 10 minutes. I started my journey with my car crawling among other cars in a pool of chaos. I managed to get near the area where I lived around 7:30, exactly 30 minutes later. To my surprise I found that the street I normally take to reach my home was blocked with police rails and two officers were standing there. If I missed that street it would take me another 30 to 45 minutes of turning in the chaos to get back to a previous spot and choose another street. I had no option.

I spoke to one of the officers. “I live right there and I need to get home quickly.”

“Sorry madam, prohibited. There’s a tashreefa.”

Tashreefa has no literal translation in the English language, probably because there is no equivalent to the phenomenon outside our world. It is a deliberate blockage of streets in anticipation of a prominent politician passing in his bullet-proof car. The streets get decorated by soldiers, human beings that are placed on both sides of the road from beginning to end for hours until the sacred passing takes place. Until then the street is literally out of order. No forewarning, no easy access to alternative routes. You drive there, get stuck, and discover that it’s a tashreefa.

My blood began to simmer. “You cannot deny me access to my own home. I must get there now!” He went to speak to a higher authority sitting on a chair with its back to the street and busying itself with some papers. He came back with the same answer. “It’s prohibited, madam.”

At this moment the simmering grew to a boil. I found myself opening the door and charging out of the car in an anger fit I usually describe as an out of body experience. I suddenly acquire a much higher voice and begin to say and do things I have no control of. I walked to the “authority” on the chair and ignored the officer’s calls after me.

“I need to get to my home. All I demand of you is a little respect to my basic human right as a citizen of this country!”

The man’s eyes were wide open staring at me in disbelief. “You may take the next street.” I began to fume. “The next street is a one-way street and if one of you catches me he’d charge me 1000 EGP, and there is no way I can enter it since it is equally blocked with cars trying to get to the already blocked road we’re in. So now please allow me to get into my home. You may search me if you will. I have no weapons. I need to get to the child that is waiting for me there!”

I had no idea who that child was, unless I count my cat as one.

Predicting that he would not be rid of me soon, he waved at his subjects to allow me in. I walked to my car without another word and drove in. It was a party in the Turkish ambassador’s residence. Black cars, black suits, black dresses. I was thrown back into my black mood. I drove with so much fury and kept cursing out loud alone in the car.

I got to my home and all I could think of was how many of us end up being reduced to basic levels just to protect our rights to go by in the streets of Cairo with no hassle. What’s more important, I was alarmed at the things I said. I said “please.” Please?? What the hell was I thinking? Was I so afraid he’d let me do the 45 minutes turn and I was secretly begging for his mercy? A “child”?? What child? I lied!

Is it the systematic subordination we’ve been subjected to in our society for so many years that made inner submissive cowards out of us? Has the hierarchical system of authority been passed down to us individuals, making us oppressive to those below us and submissive to those above?

Yes. As children many of us went to schools where we were beaten by teachers for speaking in class or for not doing our homework. We were yelled at and humiliated in front of our peers in class. When we grew up we became used to laws and regulations being issued overnight and executed with no consideration of any say on our part.

The spark that I see in the eyes of Egyptians as I look at pictures taken some forty or more years ago no longer exists. The people I see walking in the street have a look of defeat in their eyes. The women have lost their glory, lines of exhaustion and fatigue have carved their ways on their faces. The men have lost their sense of self-worth. The little sense of control they still aspire to have is practiced on their children or wives.

Egyptians have been systematically neutralized by a smart centralized authority that has reigned above them for so many decades. They used to revolt, but now they can’t get more than a hundred people to stand still in a demonstration. A culture of prohibition overrules everything. I can’t get a refund in a shop, I can’t change my order in a restaurant, I can’t enter certain restaurants because I cover my hair. The list continues.

Inside me there’s a free soul longing for harmony with its surroundings, but sometimes I feel like it’s forever caged inside the body of the hesitant person I have become. I don’t know how long I will further have to wait until it is out, but I’m going to keep trying to unshackle it bit by bit until I, all of me, am free.